Actually, what I meant was this: DDMD is currently based on DMD 2.040. Ie,
ATM, it's DMD 2.040 ported to D. You said you were trying to use the 2.053
backend with DDMD, so I was just wondering if you were also updating DDMD
frontend to be a D port of something newer than 2.040.

Yeah now it hit me what you meant. First I was trying to build with
2.053, which works now (and I can see you've made an update which
allows building with 2.053, that's great!).
Then I've tried building DMD 2.053 as a library to link it with DDMD.
With a few changes in bridge.cpp and elsewhere that actually works, so
I can build ddmd.exe. That's good news, but it does segfault at
runtime, and when it doesn't it can't compile much (or any) D code
since it will choke on anything in std/druntime that doesn't work with
2.040. That's kind of obvious though. :)
The next step is to diff DMD frontends 2.040 and 2.053, and port these
to DDMD. I can see from the directory diff that this will take quite a
bit of work.
But I don't know who is working on what? From posts around here I've
seen a mention of someone overhauling DDMD to use the GC, and Nick
seems to work on his own code injection mechanism. It seems like there
will be duplicated work unless we all know who is doing what.
Me, I'd like to start doing diffs and slowly porting the old frontend
to the newest one (2.053). But maybe someone is already doing that
work.. hard to tell when there's no organization.

But I don't know who is working on what? From posts around here I've
seen a mention of someone overhauling DDMD to use the GC,

Yea, that's Denis Koroskin ("korDen"). From what I understand, he's the main
guy behind DDMD. Although what he's doing, from what he described to me, is
adding *a* GC to DDMD to clean up the leeks the ported frontend leaves
behind (Ie, not the druntime GC).

and Nick
seems to work on his own code injection mechanism.

That's already in (and it's totally optional for anyone who doesn't like
it). Although it's possible I may have missed a few classes I should have
added it to...(Actually, I know I missed at least one, I'll have to check
again to see what it was...something like "DIdent" or "Identifier" maybe?)
It's a trivial change though. Just the same two little lines added to each
affected module.
Unless Jacob Carlborg's already back on it, I've been temped to finish the
work he started on making it build on Linux (I had assumed that was
complete, but he told me there was still more to be done on that.)

It seems like there
will be duplicated work unless we all know who is doing what.

Yea, probably a good idea for us to take a poll on that.

Me, I'd like to start doing diffs and slowly porting the old frontend
to the newest one (2.053). But maybe someone is already doing that
work.. hard to tell when there's no organization.

I was thinking of doing that since I didn't see anyone else doing it, but I
have a ton of other things keeping me plenty busy, so that'd be great if you
could. I don't know if anyone else is already working on it though (although
the last pushes besides mine were 7 months ago, so I suspect not).
According to a quick look at the changeset page (
http://hg.dsource.org/projects/ddmd/ ), the other contributors to DDMD,
besides me and Denis, are Trass3r, Eldar Insafutdinov, and Jacob Carlborg.
To all of them: Are you currently working on anything in DDMD, and if so,
what? To all: Is there anyone else working on anything?

I was thinking of doing that since I didn't see anyone else doing it, but I
have a ton of other things keeping me plenty busy, so that'd be great if you
could.

I don't have a lot of experience with DDMD/DMD since I'm new to its
codebase. But I do have some experience porting C/C++ code to D. I
don't think it would be too hard to figure out how to port the new
changes, since DDMD seems to keep an almost 1to1 representation of C++
and D code (well apart from a slightly different structure of its
modules).
But it's the scale of changes that is the biggest issue. I've got
plenty of free time so I can volunteer to give it a go.

I was thinking of doing that since I didn't see anyone else doing it, but
I
have a ton of other things keeping me plenty busy, so that'd be great if
you
could.

I don't have a lot of experience with DDMD/DMD since I'm new to its
codebase. But I do have some experience porting C/C++ code to D. I
don't think it would be too hard to figure out how to port the new
changes, since DDMD seems to keep an almost 1to1 representation of C++
and D code (well apart from a slightly different structure of its
modules).

There's a page on the D Wiki with some helpful information on some of DMD's
internals, but I never seem to be able to find the link. Anyone have it
handy? (And of course, I or anyone else could certainly try to help with any
questions.)

But it's the scale of changes that is the biggest issue. I've got
plenty of free time so I can volunteer to give it a go.

http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?DMDSourceGuide
KennyTM was kind enough to add a whole bunch of front-end info in
recent weeks, thanks Kenny!
Ok well if somebody is already doing the port they should let me now
on this NG, otherwise I'll start doing this the next day.

This is much harder than I expected it to be..
It's problematic because everything has to be hand-ported. And things
aren't so obvious, as DDMD introduces some of its own helper
functions.
I think to really port this properly I would need to know the ins and
outs of the compiler (or at least its front-end). Otherwise I could
end up blindly converting C code to D without paying too much
attention on what it does.
Yikes! Sorry guys, I think I'll have to pass on this project for now.
Maybe in a few months I'll check it out again, but not now. I hate
chickening out, but I'd do more damage than good if I blindly
translated this to D. Sowwy! :/

This is much harder than I expected it to be..
It's problematic because everything has to be hand-ported. And things
aren't so obvious, as DDMD introduces some of its own helper
functions.
I think to really port this properly I would need to know the ins and
outs of the compiler (or at least its front-end). Otherwise I could
end up blindly converting C code to D without paying too much
attention on what it does.
Yikes! Sorry guys, I think I'll have to pass on this project for now.
Maybe in a few months I'll check it out again, but not now. I hate
chickening out, but I'd do more damage than good if I blindly
translated this to D. Sowwy! :/

Unless Jacob Carlborg's already back on it, I've been temped to finish the
work he started on making it build on Linux (I had assumed that was
complete, but he told me there was still more to be done on that.)

When I stopped working on DDMD it was not working on Posix. There were
some bugs that I couldn't get around (C++ symbol mangling IIRC), I think
they all have been fixed now. If I recall there wasn't much left to get
it to work, unless new bugs or other bugs hidden by the first ones show up.
I have no plans on working on DDMD any time soon.
--
/Jacob Carlborg